Team Bettendorf in Missouri

Coconut Chicken Soup

I am moving my homestead blog over with my regular blog.  Join me there!!

So I was told by two friends that this soup is good.  I think we should try it.

1 quart chicken stock

1.5 cups coconut milk or 7oz creamed coconut.

1/4 teas dried chile flakes

1 teas freshly grated ginger

juice of one lemon

sea salt or fish sauce

several green onions (optional)

1 Tbsp finely chipped cilantro

First you boil the chicken stock.

Skim off any scum that floats to the top.

Time to add the rest.  Chile flakes, coconut, lemon juice and ginger.

We also chopped up the cilantro and green onions to add to the soup because I like both those flavors and thought it would taste better that way. :)

The food processor was faster than hand chopping.

Add everything.

Simmer for 15 minutes and ladle into bowls or mugs.  We added chicken because Jeff said you can't have just broth soup.

In the end this was not our favorite meal.  I think I expected too much from the soup.  I wanted it to be a  meal but Sally Fallon clearly says that it is a "good way to begin a big meal".  It is meant to be a soup course in a larger meal.  I don't know if I would have loved it if I had only had a mug of it as none of us was real fond of the coconutty taste paired with chicken but it was edible.  We probably will never make this again.

Soaked Oats

Here you go Vicki.  This is how we do it. :)

We do 6 cups steel cut oats (actually just increased to 8 cups).  The rolled oats turn to mush.

Add 6 cups water and 12 Tbsp whey, yogurt, kefir or buttermilk.  One cup of oats would need 2 Tbsp whey.  In my pic you can see I used buttermilk.

Then mix it up and let it sit for 12-24 hours.  This is the next morning.  The oats have absorbed the water.  

Now add another 6 cups water and warm gently. Some oats always stick to the bottom so we keep the heat down to avoid burning.

 We eat ours with your choice of cranberries, peanut butter, honey, maple syrup and butter.  Big hit here in the Bettendorf home.

They ask for oats all the time.  We serve with a cup of raw milk, of course.

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Now I like the way Sally Fallon does it but I have found the oats are less crunchy in the morning if you add ALL the water the night before.  That way it doesn't absorb everything and stay dry.  If you like really runny oats you can make it in the crockpot and let it cook overnight.  So you would let them sit one night (or all day for 12 hours) and then turn on the crock pot the night before.  You will awaken to warm, yummy oats.

Saurkraut

This is a favorite food here.  We eat it on bratwerst and salad and meat and oh...anything else we can think of.  My only problem is keeping us in saurkraut.  Someday I'll have one of these fermenting crocks.  And I'll make it by the 5 nd 10 liters.  Jillian is my official saurkraut helper.  It is kind of a tradition for us.  I chop the cabbage into manageable pieces and she feeds them into the machine. 

Ingredients:

One medium cabbage

1T caraway seeds

1T salt

4T whey

I used two smallish cabbages and I only like half the caraway.  The first time I made it it was too carawayish and I had no preconcieved notions because I had never had saurkraut prior.

I put the cabbage mixture in the mixing bowl of the Bosch with the whisk attachments and let it go for 5-8 minutes.  I detest the pounding the cabbage part.  It hurts my hands and makes my arms tired.  You can see the caraway (I use about half what the recipe calls for) and the salt.

After it has mixed for awhile and seems pretty wet I spoon it into jars.  The cabbage does get kinda frothy with the mixer method but if you let it sit for a minute the bubbles dissipate and it looks just like the stuff you might have pounded by hand.  Spooning into jars is really a big person job so I don't have pictures of my helper doing this.  Three jars of yummy Saurkraut.  This stuff is far better than store bought.

Soaked beans

For those that wanted soaked beans.  I couldn't leave you hanging.

Make sure you have all of your ingredients.

2 cups black beans, kidney beans, pinto beans, black eyed peas or white beans.

warm filtered water

2 T whey

4 cloves garlic

sea salt and pepper

Measuring in the beans.  Remember we double the recipe and sometimes quadruple. :)  I like to have alot of beans on hand because they make an easy breakfast or lunch.  Which I will show you later on in Healthy Meal Thursdays.

Beans are really fun and they feel good on your hands.

Everyone enjoys beans.  Don't forget to wash your hands before cooking.

Beans are an easy, non-messy meal to cook with kids.

When the beans are measured out you need to rinse them.  Unless of course you like grit in your meals. :)  Pick out any funky beans.  I like to dig my hands deep in the beans and mix them over and over eachother.  Like I said, everyone enjoys playing in beans.  Older kids can quite easily handle this job as well.  Little kids tend to get rambunctious and dump the beans.

Then back in the bowl to add water and whey.

I somehow lost the picture of the whey being poured in.  Make sure you cover your beans with 2-3 inches of water.  The beans will expand and absorb the water.  The last thing you want is to find your beans sprouting and unusable.  Make sure they stay completely covered.

Then the beans soak 12-24 hours.  Once again I lost a picture of the beans after soaking.  There WILL be foamies on top.  Dump the beans in the colander and rinse again.

Place in crockpot or stock pot and cover with water.  I add salt here...I think I added 1T to my beans.  I also add green chilis and usually garlic as well.  You must add the salt before cooking or you will have mighty bland beans.

Cook for 4-8 hours.  I let mine cook for 4 hours on high and then my crock pot automatically turned to "warm".  They stayed warmed all night and we had them for breakfast the next morning.  I will share that on  Healthy Meal Thursday.

Roman Lentil Soup

What you need:

3 med onions or 3 leeks

3 carrots

2 T butter

2T EVOO

2 q beef or chicken stock

2 c red or brown lentils (orange/red ones turn to mush)

Several sprigs of thyme

1/2 t dried peppercorns

1/4 lemon juice or whey

sea salt or fish sauce and pepper

piima cream (sour cream)

First you measure out the lentils.  Turns out that a bag of lentils is just about 2 cups.  How nice.

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Then we covered the lentils with water and left them to soak for 7 hours.  When we checked them 7 hours later all the water was gone!!  Who knew those little things would absorb so much.

I sauteed the onions and carrots for 30 minutes.  This smelled good.

Then it was time to add the chicken stock and lentils.  Here is the chicken stock I stole out of the roaster oven.  I am trying a new system with the stock.  I am leaving the bones in the roaster and adding more water each time I take some out.  My stock always is so strong.  I bet I can "milk" those bones for more quarts of stock.

I let the lentils and stock simmer for 30 minutes.  You can see the thyme sprigs floating on the left.

Now after I blended the soup it turned into something that looks like it came out the back end of a baby.  Not pleasant at all.  It was NOT visually appealing.  The taste did not follow the look but it wasn't very tasty.  It may have been the thyme.  It may have been the texture.  Maybe it was my bias toward the other lentil soup I make.  I mistakenly thought that since I liked the other lentil soup I would enjoy this as well. 

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So I tried to salvage it by adding cumin, cocoa and baby spinach.  It also needs ALOT of salt.

All in all I was not pleased and no one in the family was excited about this meal.  If you decide to try this please post a link in the comments here.  Maybe you know of other ways to doctor this meal up and make it yummy.  Post that info as well.

Thanks for cooking along with me. :)

Beans and Lentil Soup are neck and neck.

Voting will close Friday night and Saturday I will post an ingredients list.  Monday we will cook again. :)   Thank you everyone for playing.  This is more fun than I thought it was going to be.

When you post on your blog please come back and post a comment here in the corresponding post for what you are making with a direct link to that entry.  In other words don't just insert a link to your blog.  Make sure the link will take the reader directly to your particular post about this subject. 

I like the idea of doing something useful with the marrow.  I thought I read in NT something about a beef marrow pate' but I can't find it now.  Anyone know what I am talking about?

I like the idea of using veggie scraps for broth and asking for turkey carcasses.  I have a big freezer perhaps I'll try this this year.  Suppose I could go door to door?  I'd love to have a bunch of turkey bones in my freezer!!

And yes the bones are so soft they pose no harm for the dog.  Of course we used to feed our dog raw chicken instead of dog food and those bones didn't hurt her either.  I think it is more the brittle cooked, but not boiled bones you need to worry about for poochie. :)

Chicken Stock. part 2

I wait until the chicken is cool enough to touch without any pain. :)  So the chicken cooled in the roaster.  Here is the chicken removed from the bones.  This process took me MAYBE 30 minutes. 

And I bagged the chicken.

Now here are my veggies cut up.  Sally Fallon calls for 1 large onion, 2 carrots and 3 celery stalks.  What I do is look in my fridge and see what veggies I have that are on the verge of going bad.  That is what I have here.  The celery and carrots were on this side of old so I used them up real quick.  These three veggies are staples for chicken stock but I have been known to add in other veggies as well.

And into the roaster they went.  We set the temp at around 200 so it would simmer but not boil.  Off to bed we went.

The next morning this is what we found!!  Oh yum!!  We could smell it through the garage door and down the hallway.  Now to add our thyme sprig 10 minutes before finishing.  And we turned the roaster off so it would cool and we could strain it.

I'll have pictures of the straining and skimming the fat off process this evening.

Chicken Stock. Part 1

So it was requested that I start with some basic yet staple foods you would find in Nourishing Traditions.  I can't think of anything that is more of a staple food than a basic soup stock.

Things you will need:

1-2 Whole chickens

Gizzards (optional)

Chicken Feet (optional)

4 quarts water

2 T vinegar

1 large onion coursely chopped

2 carrots peeled and coursely chopped

3 celery sticks, coursely chopped

1 bunch parsley

Here is Junie doing the first steps.

Rinsing the chickens

Check inside to make sure there are no gizzards or neck.

Put the chickens in the roaster pan.  We have a roaster oven that cost $28 at WalMart.  We use it in the garage to keep from heating up the kitchen.  If you don't need to cook two chickens at a time or don't mind the heat you can bake in the oven.  A crockpot in the garage might work as well.  I'm not sure if you can cook dry stuff in a crockpot.

After you have seasoned your chickens to your liking (I don't put anything on mine) you start them to bake at 350 and 20 minutes for every pound.

Now you are half way to your yummy chicken stock!!

Btw, I will be doubling all my recipes on here but I will be posting the correct amounts that are found in the book.  So if the book says 2 cups I'll post 2 cups but my pictures will show 4 cups.  Just so you all don't get confused.

Let me go check my stock that has been simmering all night and I'll update here in a moment with the finishing processes.

Cook along?

So I am wanting to host a weekly/biweekly cook along here so we can all try new healthy recipes in the Nourishing Traditions style.  Now I need some input.  Would you all like to try soups, desserts, fermented foods, soaked grains or something else first?

What I am imagining is I cook the item with alot of pictures and step by step instructions.  Then you all try it and report on whether it was easy, moderate or difficult and how well it was recieved by your family.  I then link back to all of your experiences and we all learn together and build a little visual recipe book to share.

Answer these questions please:

1. What would you like to start with?

2. Weekly or every other week?